Right. But when you temporarily changed the parameter, the init.ora is changed during the time it's effective. Any jobs that are running on the database, like backup, Unique transaction ID enbedded with timestamp will all take the sysdate as 12-DEC-2007 00:00:00 during the time the FIXED_DATE is defined. My requirement is to fix the sysdate at session level. May not be through FIXED_DATE. Is there any other parameter that can be altered through ALTER SESSION, not ALTER SYSTEM. I see some of the parameters can be altered at session level and also at system level. From OraDoc, it says FIXED_DATE can be altered only at SYSTEM level, which is NOT what I want.